Editorial: Special session ill advised

Jul. 16, 2008 11:47 PM

Brooding lawmakers are considering calling themselves into a special session in August to override some or all of the governor's vetoes to $16 million worth of their favored projects.

A Legislature with the moxie to stand up to a governor is not a bad thing in a state where so much power is vested with the chief executive. But in the aftermath of lawmakers' self-immolation by pay raise, this exercise risks the appearance of payback and petulance.

Lawmakers also stand the risk of exacerbating their public relations problems if they spend the thousands a session would cost but couldn't muster the two-thirds majority needed to override a veto.

But more than simple PR and despite an occasional inconsistency in Gov. Bobby Jindal's selected cuts, lawmakers should let the vetoes stand because the governor's relatively modest efforts at budget trimming are an overdue exercise in fiscal restraint.

Of course, it's impossible not to wonder if the governor's budget knife would have been as sharp without the political motivation of cutting his way back into voters' hearts to overcome his role in the pay raise fiasco. Jindal professed to be hands off what began as a $30,000-plus increase. Public outrage, however, forced him to take out his veto pen for the $20,000 pay hike lawmakers finally settled on.

Legislators have until July 28 to vote for or against a session that would address some of the 23 bills the governor vetoed or see those pet items stripped from the budget. If the Legislature does organize, it would be the first veto override session since the current constitution was enacted more than three decades ago.

Whatever his motivations for deleting it earmarks that ranged from the arts to juvenile justice, Jindal's cuts hopefully will set the tone for a more rigorous process, if not outright overhaul, of lawmakers' seeking state dollars for projects in their home districts. Many of the projects had merit. Many of them perhaps could have passed the administration's test for "substantial regional impact." But the argument against state funding of nongovernmental endeavors is that local communities need to be more responsible for their own needs and services.

Meanwhile, around $39 million in local earmarks was left in the operating budget. That is enough to draw criticism from the Public Affairs Research Council: "With no scoring mechanism or uniform evaluation procedure for each local project granted funding," says the government analyst, "the public is left to wonder why those were left in the budget to compete with statewide needs for state tax dollars."

Nevertheless, PAR correctly concludes Jindal's vetoes were good first steps to budget reform. It's also a lesson for local communities as they contemplate spending Haynesville Shale windfalls. Rather than spread around the dollars in individual police juror districts, focus on core government missions like roads and stick with strategies that transform rather than play simple catchup.

Consider, for instance, what the city of Shreveport might have accomplished if it had concentrated its casino earnings on a few key goals rather than scatter tens of thousands of dollars annually along a waterfront of causes. Or what if the titular riverfront development fund would have done just that — focused dollars on protecting and maximizing this key geographic feature instead of being tapped for a variety of projects across the city under the catchall guise of economic development?

Regarding the state budget, PAR would further recommend that the state, as this page has suggested before, establish a revolving loan and grant fund that would replace all line-item funding for local projects and programs in the capital outlay and operations budgets.

An "objective, rational and transparent" process, PAR says, would require full accountability for the spending and meaningful performance evaluation for funded programs." Getting more of the process out of the back room would create a level playing field.